If children are not property of their parents, then parents are not property of the children. The logical conclusion is that there is no obligation for parents to care for children. It then follows that child support laws are pure slavery.
Children should be raised by people who love them and care for the voluntarily.
Now the question becomes who gets to decide where a child lives and what standard of living is acceptable? Is it enough that a child is fed a prison diet and has a place on the floor to sleep?
Given a dispute between two adults about how to care for a child, on what grounds should the dispute be resolved? Is there a "parenting right" that shall not be infringed?
@dantheman Neither is the other's property, but the parent(s) made decisions to bring that child into the physical, and thus have some responsibility to them. The child is incapable of taking care of itself, or even getting itself into the care of someone else, they are basically prisoners, and it's pretty generally accepted, even in Euro-American culture that you have to care for your prisoners.
I highly recommend checking out Stefan Molyneux's podcasts on parenting & childhood development, he includes a lot of great guests and research. Start with the oldest posts, and pick a title that speaks to you.
The key right now is a cultural shift, getting people to understand how humans develop and the kind of damage that is being done. As long as the masses accept things like mass murder (they call it "war") and assaulting children (they call that one "spanking") as normal & acceptable, nothing is going to change this.
As far as child-support, settling disputes, creating standards, etc., the key is doing things in the least violent way possible. If we can change cultural values instead of making violent threats (calling them "laws"), then we get a longer lasting, more effective solution, rather than just a different kind of violence. We don't need to have the perfect solutions right now in order to know what doesn't work and start moving away from it.
These are interesting questions: What determines what is best for a child? I think that completely depends on what you want to get out of them, what do you want them to learn? Think of it like programming a computer. Abuse and neglect program into the child violent tendencies and low self esteem, which can lead to drug and other addictions and other problems which plague individuals and society. Love and positive discipline will lead to happy, well adjusted adults who can handle the awful things life throws at everyone. I've seen both sides of the spectrum as I've worked in youth drug treatment facilities and known a variety of people.
OK, you feed the child simple food (what do they feed folks in prison, anyway?)and you can't afford a bed. Maybe you intend to teach the child humility, gratitude for simple things in life. Maybe you can't afford more than basic necessities. But in the long run, those things don't matter as much as how much time you spend with your kids playing and laughing.
After all, if fancy beds, exotic food, and all the toys in the world created happy, well adjusted adults then wealthy people would never have problem teenagers or suicides.
I don't think children benefit from fancy food... they prefer mac and cheese any day.
Things don't matter, love does.
The purpose of child support laws are to make sure a child is taken care of. Believe me, it is difficult to raise a child on a single income. Difficult to pay rent, plus work, plus help with homework, plus buy food and clothing. Forget about ever doing anything fun or having a car with an air conditioner.
A parent accepts responsibility for care of the child when they bring a child into the world. If they cannot or choose not to take responsibility, then adoption would be an option. You are correct, children should be raised only by people who do so voluntarily.
And then, when the parents are too old to take care of themselves, it would then be the child's responsibility to take care of them. It balances out, it isn't slavery.
I think the point of the article is to say that parents should treat their children with love and respect, rather than as little people to be punching bags or objects of any kind.
For that matter, all people of any age or relationship should be treated with dignity and respect, but that would be the subject of another article!
@casandrarose speaks from a place of authenticity here.
She is not only a hard working single mom who found herself in really bad position when her husband suddenly lost his job to an H1B. She's also a trained child psychologist, who while working as a youth treatment counselor got to see every day what happens to children who's parents don't feel that they owe a significant duty of care to their progeny. She also works with the disabled & handicapped as well as finding time for insightful commentary like this.
@casandrarose Thanks for this, upvoted.
@sterlinluxan This was a well thought out and insightful commentary. Normally I try to pop in and offer constructive criticism or at least a counter point because many posts I choose to respond to are simply biased or unbalanced. Nothing to deconstruct here, nothing to criticize. I'd rate this as the absolute best post I've seen today. So don't take my lack of insightful commentary here as a negative. Wish I could upvote you more than once!
@dantheman There used to be a "parenting right" that could not be infringed. However those days were back when most folks in a town knew each other. A grand parent, or aunt or uncle, or neighbor could step in and give advice when they saw abusive or deplorable conditions and that would be enough to change the behavior in the offending parent.
Our society has decided that this system didn't scale. So now we have a nanny state where a homeless family can lose their kids if they seek help instead of actually getting a hand up.
Now we live in a world of "hand outs, not hand ups". You have to rely on the state to be the judge, jury and executioner of what is and is not good parenting. You have to rely on the state to select "better parents than you", and then pay them money to raise your kids for you while you are now "in the system" and trying not to get lost in the shuffle.
That is the world we have made. Only we can fix it.
Only way to fix it is to decide right here, right now that we're going to change it.
Steemit is a great step in the right direction, but more needs to be done.
As a society we need to move away from "What can I get from my neighbor?" attitude to "What can I do for my neighbor?". At that point we're no longer the same person, we're better.
While parents are not property of their children, they are responsible for creating a human that is dependent on the parent for survival. It is now their moral responsibility to take care of the child.
As far as who makes caretaking decisions, standard of living and parental 'rights', I think this is all resolved if start respecting the will of children. If a child can choose to leave their parent and go with a new willing caretaker, I don't think we would have to worry about concrete beds and prison diets. If there is disagreement on how to care for a child, tiebreaker should be the will of the child. I think that is the point of this article and others like it. Children are people. Respect them as other human beings.
The will of the child cannot be relied upon for the first 5+ years of their life. An abused child will "choose" to stay because "fear of the unknown" is worse than the abuse they have.
The point of my comment is that while parent's shouldn't use violence, they have no obligation to do anything for the child beyond keeping them alive. A child who does not obey can be denied freedom of movement (grounded), denied toys, and they can be denied all but minimal food necessary to keep them alive, etc.
All of these tactics are non-violent, yet they can have far greater psychological impact on the kids than a slap or spanking.
I am an advocate of non-violent solutions to problems, but the issue of kids/elderly/disabled is one that is very hard to resolve in an objective way.
Oh, I disagree. What about loving the child, teaching them good manners (subjective, I know), promoting a nurturing environment for the child (emotional, social, physical, etc), to name but a few?
If all a parent does is keep the child alive, to me that is not a very good parent.
If tossing someone in a dark corner, denying them movement, contact with other humans, learning opportunities, sunlight, more than the bare minimum maintenance food, recreational time (and so on) is non-violent, then I do not think "non-violent" means so much anymore.
I usually agree with and enjoy reading your views on random stuff (from way before steemit even existed), but on this I will have to disagree 100% - unless I grossly misunderstood you.
Actually, I think your second and last paragraphs can give us the answer to these problems. Is society OK with doing the things in paragraph 2 to the elderly and disabled? If not, then it is not okay to do those things to children. That is the point of this article and others like it. Children are not some sub species of human. The idea of punishments and gaining compliance through fear, intimidation and/or pain needs to become obsolete and shamed.
@dantheman I like this response. I think something that this post does too much of is assuming that children are often the victims of hitting, etcetera. I think that the large majority of children are well taken care of, or at least looked after in a positive way more than negative.
Children are essentially humans who do not have the ability to take care of themselves, so they need the parent to help them out. In this situation, it sort of is involuntary for the child to rely on the adult. However, services such as adoption exist to help move the child from a home where which the adult does not want to voluntarily take care of the child into a home that is more than happy to take care of them. And if the deal is that the adult takes care of the child who lacks the means to take care of themselves, then they should follow the orders of the adult so they don't make mistakes and get hurt.
Idk if that makes sense, or even if I made a point, but I think the post focuses way too much on the negative, and that it makes logical leaps in determining that the lack of freedom a child has (when they can't even take care of themselves) is what causes war and destruction.
"I think that the large majority of children are well taken care of, or at least looked after in a positive way more than negative."
Do you spend time around many families?
I've interacted with a lot of families, both in and out of the "system." I think most parents do the best they know how to do, and while tempers flare, and no parent is perfect, most parents do a pretty good job.
Of course there are always those who don't do their best and would benefit from positive interventions. I think within a few years, child abuse and neglect will be a thing of the past.